The Generalitat goes hunting for the young civil servant

BarcelonaThere is a shortage of young civil servants. The Generalitat warns that 12% of Catalan administration workers will retire by 2030 and that it needs to replace the 30,000 public positions that will become vacant over the next four years. For this reason, the Government wants to take advantage of the reform of the law on the School of Public Administration of Catalonia, which will be approved this coming Tuesday, to improve and strengthen the recruitment of young people and encourage them to apply for Generalitat civil service exams.

Sources from the School of Public Administration itself assert that the fact that young people prefer the private sector over the administration is not due to economic issues or working hours, but rather a lack of vocation. In this sense, they point out that one of the examples to follow is the medical profession, where they believe the importance of public service is successfully instilled, and they want to convey this message in all degree programs that offer employment opportunities as a public servant.

In fact, the Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau, has assured in statements to the media that the new law, which still has to pass through Parliament, aims to "empower" the School of Public Administration in the civil service selection processes and promote a "proactive attitude" when it comes to seeking talent in vocational training centers and universities, and in the creation of scholarships for people preparing for civil service exams and internships for students.

The minister also recalled that he has already launched initiatives to "generate new vocations" with, for example, the opening of 2,000 internship positions in the administration. "If we want to have good professionals in charge of urban planning or the environment, we need to incorporate these new vocations," the minister remarked in statements from the headquarters of the School of Public Administration.

With the goal of hunting for talent, the new regulation also aims to homogenize the Catalan administration and boost internal mobility. One of the key points, according to the same sources from the School of Public Administration, is to standardize the accreditation of skills and homologate the knowledge acquired in training, whether provided by the Generalitat or by municipal or supra-municipal administrations. In this sense, the new law wants to grant the School of Public Administration the competence to define and develop the functional and competence-based framework for recruitment. Even so, Salvador Illa's government assures that it intends to maintain the model of cooperation between this body and local administrations.

Approval at the end of 2027

The Government plans to approve this regulation at next Tuesday's Executive Council and then take it to Parliament. The Minister of the Presidency explained that they will negotiate it with the different parliamentary groups and said that he "hopes to count" on the support of the Catalan executive's parliamentary partners, Esquerra and Comuns. He also said that he would "especially like" Junts to join, as the political space has a lot of experience in the Catalan administration and "they have important figures who have been linked" to the School of Public Administration. Dalmau calculates that the law can be approved towards the end of next year.

The Minister of the Presidency also vindicated the importance of the School of Public Administration and explained that it is key for the training of Catalan civil servants in, for example, artificial intelligence and self-assessment methods. "We want to achieve a training system for growth, for the selection of all personnel, quality public servants, with the maximum requirements linked to the entire training process," added Dalmau.